Life Beyond Words

As I sit here thinking I have a blog to write and nothing to say, I recall Dave Trowbridge’s wonderful exegesis of canine perception. When I read it, it reminded me quite a bit of what it’s like to live on a horse farm, surrounded by sentient beings whose many and complex modes of communication have nothing to do with words.

Most of the time, in my observation, humans use words as a screen. Set phrases and conversational filler surround us with a cloud of essentially meaningless sounds–though...